Rapper M.C. Hammer is greeted by dozens of fans at an election party at the Sheraton Place Hotel in San Francisco Tuesday November 8, 2011

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

Rapper M.C. Hammer is greeted by dozens of fans at an election...

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SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - NOVEMBER 10: MC Hammer speaks in Sydney on the power of social media at the University of Technology on November 10, 2009 in Sydney, Australia. Hammer is followed by 1.5 million people on social networking site Twitter, and the 14th most influential Tweeter in the world. (Photo by Sergio Dionisio/Getty Images)

MC Hammer had fun with the fans as he signed autographs before the game. It was MC Hammer bobble head day at the Oakland Coliseum Sunday July 17, 2011 and the rap star and his family enjoyed a memorable day celebrating the music and people of the 1980s.

Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle

MC Hammer had fun with the fans as he signed autographs before the...

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Rapper M.C. Hammer is greeted by dozens of fans at an election party at the Sheraton Place Hotel in San Francisco Tuesday November 8, 2011

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

Rapper M.C. Hammer is greeted by dozens of fans at an election...

Image 6 of 6

Hammer -- as in "Too legit to quit" MC Hammer -- is co-founding DanceJam, a Web 2.0 company that lets people record themselves dancing, upload to the site and compete to be the best dancer on the Web.
Mark Costantini / The Chronicle
Photo taken on 11/2/07, in San Francisco, CA, USA

In the annals of American dream sagas, the rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches story of Stanley Kirk Burrell, a guy from the hardscrabble streets of Oakland, qualifies for "U Can't Touch This" status.

The man known to millions of people as MC Hammer - the groundbreaking rapper turned dance/fashion legend, motivational speaker, sports management CEO, tech investor, Twitter superstar and Silicon Valley insider - may have more to add to that resume.

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who has watched Hammer's political outreach in the Bay Area and who starred with him in "2 Legit 2 Quit," a campaign video for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee that went viral, doesn't mince words when he talks about the rapper's future in politics.

"I have suggested to him that he could very well be the Schwarzenegger of Oakland," Brown told The Chronicle recently, in a reference to the actor who became California's governor.

At Lee's election-night party, Hammer, surrounded by movers and shakers including Spotify.com founder Sean Parker, Chinatown Chamber guru Rose Pak and former Secretary of State George Shultz, looked very much at home.

"Politics is about controlling your own destiny," Hammer, 49, said in an interview with The Chronicle. "Politics is about having a seat at the table of decision. And it's a must that we have that seat."

Hammer hasn't lacked for that seat or for name recognition since his meteoric rise to fame as a platinum-selling rapper two decades ago, when his "U Can't Touch This" became one of the first rap singles to cross over to the pop charts.

The entertainer's game-changing innovations in the music industry made something akin to the first rap music startup: his showy act, while dissed by hard-core rappers as a sellout, presaged the extravaganzas adopted by today's hip-hop stars such as T-Pain and Nicki Minaj.

And long before P. Diddy's Sean Jean, Jay-Z's Rocawear and 50 Cent's G Unit clothing lines hit the racks, Hammer designed and marketed his own clothing line, including his renowned Hammer pants.

He made and lost a fortune estimated at $30 million, including a stunning mansion in the hills of Fremont, in part because at the height of his fame he was "committed to creating jobs," he said.

"I was employing 300 people," he said, many of them his family and friends from Oakland, "and it got to the point where the payroll was bigger than the income."

In the years that followed, the key to his ability to regroup and restart was his "Oakland attitude," he said. "Oakland gave me the foundation."

Hammer's reboot included a move to Tracy with his wife, Stephanie, where the couple has raised 10 kids - six of their own and ranging from 6 to 24 years old, along with several nieces and nephews.

He became a minister and then a motivational speaker who was tapped to school rookie San Francisco 49ers players on the dangers of fame and fortune. He also was invited to lecture at the Stanford and Harvard business schools.

After spending years watching the best and brightest in Silicon Valley - where the mantra is "fail early and fail often" - Hammer appears well on his way to the next career remix.

The entertainer's moves have included becoming trustee of a university foundation (UC Merced), co-creating a successful Internet dance site (DanceJam.com), being CEO of a sports-management firm (Alchemist Management, which represented heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield) and last month launching a new search engine (WireDoo).

Soon, he told The Chronicle, he will formally begin another Oakland business enterprise, the Hammer Channel, which he said will meld his love of social media with producing "Hollywood content at the highest level."

It will be one more step into the booming social media world for the rapper, who was one of the first entertainers to blog and tweet - earning him 2.2 million current Twitter followers.

Hammer has used social media to promote activism in the Occupy movement, tweeting regularly on the movement's rebellion against income disparities and visiting sites in Oakland and on Wall Street - where amid rain and snow he bought and distributed 100 cups of coffee to the protesters.

"My heart just wanted to say, 'I'm connected with you, I understand - I'm from Oakland, growing up in the 99 percent,' " he said. "And I understand the struggle and not being in control of the destiny. ... I know about not having an equal opportunity at the pie. I 100 percent empathize with the position."

He's managed to connect not only with the grassroots, but with the highest levels of political leadership, invited to Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto when President Obama starred in a town hall with CEO Mark Zuckerberg this year.

And he was among guests at a $5,000-a-head Obama re-election fundraiser at San Francisco's St. Regis Hotel in April, where attendees included Sen. Dianne Feinstein, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Gov. Jerry Brown.

Hammer says he's working on an idea for a short film aimed at getting Obama's message to young voters for the 2012 election. San Francisco Democratic consultant Brian Brokaw said Hammer is increasingly viewed as a tech entrepreneur and "one of the new 'usual suspects' on the political scene."

"He does not take his involvement lightly," Brokaw said. "He wants to know and understand the debate and the issues ... and he obviously knows how to use his celebrity and talents in a way that can achieve results."

Longtime Hammer friends in the tech industry marvel that he has shown an uncanny knack for putting his finger on the pulse of their industry.

"He's a tech visionary," said Ron Conway, a tech investor who has been a friend of the rapper for more than a decade and headed the independent expenditure committee to elect Ed Lee. "Lots of other entertainers don't get tech, but he was one of the first people to visit YouTube and Twitter and adopt these technologies; he uses it every day."

Conway said Hammer is an investor in Square, the San Francisco firm that makes a payment device for mobile phones. Hammer has reportedly put funding into other Bay Area startups, including Bump Technologies, the contact-sharing phone app.

Politics, Hammer says, is just about the only arena where he hasn't dabbled much.

"I've always watched politics and been intrigued by how the system works," he said. "I understand how to build a consensus, a strong network, how to involve enterprise. ... The question really is where and at what point would it be most effective for me to be the man out front.

"I would love to be as helpful as I can in politics," he said, and "help my home, Oakland." While he is not ruling out jumping into politics, he said it would be a decision involving his wife of 25 years and his family.

East Bay hip-hop historian, radio personality and journalist Davey D, who has covered the Hammer phenomenon for years, said it would come as no surprise to him if Hammer decided to bust a move on the political stage.

"He's shown something else that endears him to Oaklanders - resilience," Davey D said. "Hammer represents the mind-set of Oakland. ... It's understanding you aren't going to make it unless you hustle.

"Why wouldn't he get into politics? When it comes to any of the elected officials currently serving ... what more do they really have on him?"

MC Hammer career remix

The many business interests of MC Hammer, the Oakland-born, platinum-selling rap artist and entertainer, include:

-- Member, UC Merced Foundation Board of Trustees

-- Co-creator and executive head, DanceJam.com

-- Social media adviser to Flipboard, which developed a popular iPad app

-- CEO of Alchemist Management, a sports-management firm

-- Founder, WireDoo, a new search engine

-- Investor in tech companies, including Square in San Francisco

-- Motivational speaker for clients, including the San Francisco 49ers

-- Founder of Hammer Channel in Oakland, an entertainment and social media enterprise